24-25: Week 5 Classroom News

Hello Families,

We are surrounded by Fall colors and students received an autmnal art lesson on their field trip last Friday: watercolors on the shores of Suttle Lake, what a beautiful combination! (See more photos below). 

Whole School:

• Friday Oct. 11 – NO SCHOOL
• Tues Oct. 15 – PTO Meeting 3:15pm: Meet at school to finalize plans for the Halloween party and discuss the wreath sale.
• Thurs Oct. 17 – Community Open House 5-6pm: This is a chance for the public to see the completion of Phase 1 construction. Spread the word to your family, neighbors and friends!
• Tues Oct. 22 – Bow Making class 5:30-7pm: PTO will host a workshop for those interested in making holiday bows for the wreaths

From Ms. Steele: ssteele@blackbutte.k12.or.us

• Administrators (5th-7th): This week the administrators classroom is jammed packed with learning new things. 
  • We started a unit on political science and are studying the three branches of government.  We are going to review what we have covered so far today, using an online bulletin board called padlet. 
  • We are finishing up the district math assessment as well as completing a writing assessment. These can be tough for the students because they are boring and take a lot of focus and concentration. AND it’s a great way for us to set goals and track growth. 
  • On Thursday (10/10), the memorization assignment is due.  Hopefully everyone put in some time over the last two weeks!  We did a practice round yesterday and some students know they need to keep working on it. Happy long weekend to everyone. Enjoy rest and family time!

From Ms. Kassie: kdemarsh@blackbutte.k12.or.us

• K-1 Literacy & Math: K-1 students got their purple folders today. These are folders that should live in their backpacks. They are a way to bring work from school home or papers from home to school. I will let you know if I am sending something in it. Please try to keep them in their backpacks. These are not needed for field trip days, so if students use different backpacks for those days that is fine to leave them in their usual school backpacks.
  • In kindergarten literacy we are introducing sounds through animal stories (Victor Vulture /v/, Lizzy Lizard /l/ Ricardo Raccoon /r/).  We are also doing a lot of work on our handwriting in both math and literacy making tidy numbers and practicing our upper case letters. First graders have been doing a lot of work with vowel sounds and learning about closed syllables.
  • In first grade math we are focusing on counting backwards and forwards to show addition and subtraction.

⇒ Work and Play to try at home:

• Have first grade students tell you if a 3 letter word/syllable is closed or not. 

  • needs just one vowel and at least one consonant after it 

  •  yes, on, cat= closed

  • Go, bear, hi = not closed

• Have kindergarten students find items that start with the /v/, /l/ or /r/ sounds. 

• For both kinder and 1st students, practice counting on or back from different numbers. If it is easy try higher numbers. 

• K-2 Science: Students have taken home their metamorphosis wheel. Please check out what they worked on. We wrapped up our animal unit today thinking about how animals help their offspring survive by building good homes in good places. Ask them where the burrowing owl builds its home.

From Mr. B: ebarrons@blackbutte.k12.or.us

• Bebop (2nd-4th):
  • In math, Bebop continues their deep dive on measurement with a focus this week on squares and paper folding (finding equal parts). They also started working on arrays (rows and columns) to bolster their sense of grouping and multiplication.
  • In literacy, Bebop are unpacking Patricia Polacco’s The Keeping Quilt, began cursive, started sight word fluency and decoding work around 5 sounds (CCVCC). Bebop also wrote their first art blurb about their watercolor composition from Suttle Lake.

From Mr. Sharp: dsharp@blackbutte.k12.or.us

• Field Studies: We had a beautiful Field Study adventure on Friday to Suttle Lake. We had great fall colors and were able to do some painting and exploring. We are digging into our birding unit now and the class is getting excited about some of our sightings. We saw several species at Suttle Lake and we are recording our observations in the eBird system. 

• PE: P.E. class has been a blast this year. We are playing games and getting exercise. The students are bringing a lot of positive energy and I am trying to challenge them physically each Tues/Thurs afternoon.

• Yearbook: On Monday, Ms. Sharp taught the first yearbook class with the group while I was away at a conference for small school leaders. We will have yearbook class about once a month through April.

From Ms. Sharp: jsharp@blackbutte.k12.or.us

• Performing Arts:
  • Last week we worked with Mr. B to think about how music can tell the story of different animals. We brainstormed ideas about how we’d introduce an animal with words, then set it to percussion. The K-2 group also got to listen to and watch musicians play Sergei Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” to hear how different instruments can tell the stories of different animals.
  • This week our two classes are focused on showing emotions in our faces, hand gestures, and bodies, as well as working with our voice to express emotion and to show different character traits. We learned the seven different aspects of voice and how we can change each aspect to create characters. Ask your kids to show you how they used their voice to create a character. The seven aspects of voice are: volume, pitch, accent/culture, rate, fluency, articulation, and mood/tone.